RI+URBlog

New Westin Hotel Tower Rendering

Here's a drawing of the new Westin hotel tower, to be built by the Procaccianti Group.

(click for larger image)

Thanks to David Brussat and The Procaccianti Group.

Capital Center Commission

I went to last week's Capital Center Commission meeting. On the docket was a presentation by Intercontinental on their development of parcel 2 in Capital Center, so I wanted to check that out. Before that, though, a couple items brought up:

Upscale housing on Parcel 6, along Canal St, between the Mosshasuck and the train station, is moving forward. They have a financial commitment and are now seeking tax stabilization agreements, and progress is being made slowly but surely.

The GTECH building will be presented at the Design Review Committee on August 31st. Will it still be bad? Probably. At least the landscaping is looking up.

The Westin escalator, to keep the riff-raff and other mall patrons out of the hotel lobby while allowing access to the skybridge, is all set to be built, perhaps beginning this October.

Parcel 2 will be developed as two residential/ ground floor retail and restaurant buildings, with further development of perhaps a hotel being a possibility in the future. There will be about 275 apartments, mostly 1- and 2-bedrooms ranging in rents from $1,350-$2,500 per month. There will also be a 500 car garage below street level and screened by retail space. At river-level there will be retail and restaurant space allowing for a lively riverwalk area, and one level up there would be a large glass-walled restaurant as a focal point for the corner on Waterplace.

Urbanistically, the design is very good. There's an internal plaza, a passageway through one building down to Waterplace Park and a good pedestrian environment between buildings.

Architecturally... still a dog. From what I can tell, there's not too much change from this image from Providence Business News. The towers are about 17 stories tall, which makes them by far the largest buildings in Capital Center, taller than the Citizens Bank Building and absolutely dwarfing the train station and the Boston Financial building. Materially, there's no continuity with the rest of the Capital Center or even Waterplace.

The developers are shooting for a late-'04, early-'05 start on construction. Are we stuck with this sore thumb sticking out of the centerpiece of the Renaissance City? We moved rivers for this!?

Capital Center Play-by-Play

This week's David Brussat column sounds many of the same notes the URBlog discussed here. He's rightly concerned for the soul of Capital Center if proposed designs for parcels 2 and 9, the two currently empty lots on either side of Waterplace Park, are built as envisioned. Waterplace is the keystone of Capital Center, and surrounding it with typical "glassy, boxy suburban glitz" could remake this unique, inspiring place into nothing special.

For reference, here's a scan of the Providence Business News image mentioned in the column (thanks Cotuit)

He ends by pointing out that the Capital Center Commission members

-- all of them, to a greater or lesser degree -- are captives of a mindset of "architectural correctness" that has been the conventional wisdom in architecture for decades: Beautiful old buildings should be saved, but new buildings that look anything like those buildings are illegitimate and uncreative.

This is ridiculous, yet it is gospel. We shall see whether the architects (and the developers who hired them) want to please the design elites or the public. Read this space for the play-by-play.

Great point. Also, you can watch this space for play-by-play.

David Brussat is a member of the Providence Journal editorial board. His column on urban design and architecture appear Thursdays on the ProJo commentary page.

First Peek at GTECH building

Yesterday's ProJo had an article about the first building to go up in downtown Providence in a decade. To be built on the first dirt lot you see when entering downtown from Rt 95, the GTECH building will occupy an amazingly important spot in Capital Center, as both a gateway to the city and one of the buildings that will urbanistically define Waterplace Park.

The article includes these two sketches, which are fine teasers, but we want more!

I'd go to these Design Review Committee meetings if I wasn't 1,500 miles away, so I can't tell you more about the design. David Brussat's not happy, though. I share his disdain for anything modernist, so I'm a bit concerned. There will be, I think, three separate terraces at different levels, which is not something I'd like to see on a building in this urban setting. Terraces tend to mess with cornice lines and can give a building an uneven feel.

The desired setbacks, to allow sidewalks up to three times wider than normal, seems like an excellent idea. At 11 stories, the extra width between building edge and the mall won't be a problem. I really like the parking garage bridge from Francis Street which marks the pedestrian entrance to Waterplace (you can see it in the first sketch).

In the second sketch you can get a better idea of what the outside walls will look like. Note the lack of adornment on the windows, which I hate. That will mean the GTECH building will look more like One Citizens than the new Marriott.

The Design committee "raved" about the design, so it looks like this building will get built close to as is. Em says she's heard this story before and won't believe it until they cut the ribbon. I'm getting to the point where you could put almost anything there and I'd be happy. This spot has been undeveloped for far too long. The original plan for Capital Center called for all the land to be filled in by now, and we're not even halfway there. We even lost the Gravity Games because of a plan to develop this site that ended up falling through (here's what we would have gotten had it been built).

The guys at Art in Ruins have more, though they want something even more modern! NO!

Here's a couple shots I took last September of the building site.